Accordingly Tamilnadu government is going to introduce board examinations for the students of class 5 and class 8, in addition to the already existing public exams for students in classes 10, 11 and 12. Meanwhile according to a circular issued to all the district education offices, the third term exams conducted in schools will henceforth be conducted as public exams. These exams will have common question papers for all the schools in Tamilnadu.

Presently schools following the Samacheer Kalvi system of education in Tamilnadu have the liberty of setting question papers till class 9 within the school itself. Furthermore the syllabus for the exams will be the portion taught in the third term, with general questions taken from the portion taught in the first and second term. As per memo, each paper will be for 60 marks, and will be held for duration of two hours and the details about detention if a student fails to pass these exams are yet to be clarified by the department.

Moreover the school education department also ordered all district level education offices to submit the list of students studying in these two classes in all schools government, government aided and private by Wednesday. Reportedly government and government-aided schools which have more than 20 students taking the board exams will be considered for allocation to examination centers, stated the memo.